Lesslie Newbigin > Quotes

“The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom.”
― Lesslie Newbigin

“A person who wields power cannot see truth; that is the privilege of the powerless.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“One does not learn anything except by believing something, and -- conversely -- if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing everything uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relationship between the two cannot be reversed. ”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

“The New Age movement, for all the validity of its protest and the value of some of its recommendations, is in truth a very old blind alley. There is a very long history to remind us of what happens when nature is our ultimate point of reference . . . . Nature knows no ethics. There is no right and wrong in nature; the controlling realities are power and fertility.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Truth to Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth

“This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really understand anything the Bible says. We are in a situation analogous to one about which the great Reformers complained. The Bible has been taken out of the hands of the layperson; it has now become the professional property not of the priesthood but of the scholars.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“Part of the terrible irony of war is that it enlists the best in human nature for purposes of mutual destruction.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“The attempt to interpret human behavior in terms of models derived from the natural sciences eventually destroys personal responsibility.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“Through the repeated hammer blows of defeat, destruction, and deportation, interpreted by the faithful prophets, Israel has to learn that election is not for comfort and security but for suffering and humiliation.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission

“The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king - conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“But if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

“The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“If we cannot speak with confidence about biblical authority, what ground have we for challenging the reigning plausibility structure?”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“The minister’s leadership of the congregation in its mission to the world will be first and foremost in the area of his or her own discipleship, in that life of prayer and daily consecration which remains hidden from the world but which is the place where the essential battles are either won or lost.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“And since the gospel does not come as a disembodied message, but as the message of a community which claims to live by it and which invites others to adhere to it, the community's life must be so ordered that it "makes sense" to those who are so invited.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“The nation state has taken the place of God. Responsibilities for education, healing and public welfare which had formerly rested with the Church devolved more and more upon the nation state ... National governments are widely assumed to be responsible for and capable of providing those things which former generations thought only God could provide - freedom from fear, hunger, disease and want - in a word: "happiness".”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The other side of 1984

“bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and is therefore experienced as tyranny.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“There is an appearance of humility in the protestation that the truth is much greater than any one of us can grasp, but if this is used to invalidate all claims to discern the truth it is in fact an arrogant claim to a kind of knowledge which is superior to [all others]...We have to ask: 'What is the [absolute] vantage ground from which you claim to be able to relativize all the absolute claims these different scriptures make?”
― Leslie Newbigin

“In the twentieth century we have become accustomed to the fact that - in the name of the nation - Catholics will fight Catholics, Protestants will fight Protestants, and Marxists will fight Marxists. The charge of blasphemy, if it is ever made, is treated as a quaint anachronism; but the charge of treason, of placing another lyalty above that to the nation state, is treated as the unforgivable crime. The nation state has taken the place of God.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The other side of 1984

“God's kingship is present in the church, but it must be insisted that it is not the property of the church. It”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission

“If the relativist claims that, since all reasoning is embodied in a particular social context, no claim to know the truth can be sustained, one has to ask for the basis on which this claim is made. It is, after all, a claim to know something about reality — namely that reality is unknowable.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“Since total skepticism about ultimate beliefs is strictly impossible, in that no belief can be doubted except on the basis of some other belief, indifference is always in danger of giving place to some sort of fanaticism that can be as intolerant as any religion has ever been.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“Modern science has placed in human hands the power to do things that were previously unimaginable. Technology, the development of ever more sophisticated
means for achieving any end we choose, dominates modern and modernized societies. But there is a growing perception that science and technology are no substitute for wisdom - for the power to discern what ends are in accordance with the truth and the power to judge rightly between alternative ends.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

“In contrast to the long period in which the plausibility structure of European society was shaped by the biblical tradition, and in which one could be a Christian without conscious decision because the existence of God was among the self-evident truths, we are now in a situation where we have to take personal responsibility for our beliefs.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“Opinions about how it ought to function can only be personal opinions, and any assertion that the purpose for which human life exists has in fact been revealed by the One whose purpose it is, is treated as unacceptable dogmatism.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“The sociology of knowledge has taught us to recognize the fact, which is obvious once it is stated, that in every human society there is what Peter Berger calls a “plausibility structure,” a structure of assumptions and practices which determine what beliefs are plausible and what are not. It is easier to see the working of the plausibility structure in a culture of a different time or place than it is to recognize it in one’s own.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“Does the use of the word “revelation” mean that reason has been left behind? Obviously not. Both the discovery by Kepler of a new pattern in the movement of the heavenly bodies and the disclosure to Moses of a personal calling become the starting point of a tradition of reasoning in which the significance of these disclosures is explored, developed, tested against new experience, and extended into further areas of thought.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“A conscience that is forbidden to operate in the choice of goals for economic activity is not conscience in the sense in which any moralist, pagan or Christian, has every understood the term. And the family (which [Michael] Novak regards as vital to the spirit of democratic capitalism) is precisely the place where the noncapitalist values have to be learned, where one is not free to choose his company and where one is not free to pursue self-interest to the limit. Because capitalism pursues the opposite goals - freedom of each individual to choose and pursue his own ends to the limit of his power - the disintegration of marriage and family life is one of the obvious characteristics of advanced capitalist societies.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture

“If I do not know the purpose for which human life was designed, I have no basis for saying that any kind of human life-style is good or bad.”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society

“What is true in the position of the social activists is that a Church which exists only for itself and its own enlargement is a witness against the gospel, that the Church exists not for itself and not for its members but as a sign and agent and foretaste of the kingdom of God, and that it is impossible to give faithful witness to the gospel while being indifferent to the situation of the hungry, the sick, the victims of human inhumanity. I”
― Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society